Indian country refers to Native land, including reservations, trust lands, and restricted fee lands under federal jurisdiction where Native American tribes exercise sovereignty. This report provides statistics on the demographic characteristics, most serious offense, and conviction status of persons held in Indian country jails. Key findings include, after declining in 2020 (to 2,020 persons), the Indian country jail population increased in midyear 2024 for the fourth consecutive year (to 2,430 persons); Indian country jails admitted 6,120 persons during June 2024, a 12% increase from the 5,450 admissions during June 2023; the ratio of jail admissions to average daily population was 2.6 to 1 in June 2024 (6,120 admissions to 2,350 inmates), down from 4.8 to 1 in June 2014 (10,460 admissions to 2,170 inmates); and two-thirds (66%) of all individuals incarcerated in Indian country jails at midyear 2024 were held for a nonviolent offense or other holds, up from 62% at midyear 2023.

Nationally, more than 2.4 million children are being raised by kin, relatives, or close family friends, without a parent in the household. Social science confirms children do best in kinship foster care and family connections are critical to healthy child development and a sense of belonging. Maintaining connections with kin helps preserve children’s cultural identity and relationship to their community. This brief describe how judges’ actions can help support kin-first culture in child placement and legal permanence decision making. It suggests that judges review efforts by both caseworkers and attorneys to identify and notify kin and facilitate kinship placements, help maintain family connections by exploring ways to include non-placement kin in the child’s life, such as ordering visitation between the child and any relative or person to whom the child has a strong attachment, and determine from the beginning of the case if the kin caregiver is supportive of the parents’ efforts to reunify or alternatively if they are willing to permanently care for the child.

Federal Work-Study (FWS) is a distinctive type of financial aid, originally intended to reduce financial constraints and improve access to career-relevant job opportunities. Prior research on FWS has primarily focused on post-enrollment, post-program-participation outcomes, leaving potential upstream margins of impact unexplored. This working paper studies the causal impacts of receiving an FWS offer at a large public college system, including two- and four-year campuses. Researchers found no effects of FWS offers on enrollment. However, researchers found substantial and statistically significant increases in enrollment for community college students and independent students. In addition, researchers found that receiving an FWS offer before the start of the school year increases FWS participation by 27 percentage points – a substantial and statistically significant effect. Lastly, the offer-induced increase in FWS job holding is also heterogenous across subgroups.

This study aims to understand the recent expansion of career-connected learning in New York City’s public education system. Career-connected learning is a framework that bridges the divide between college and career preparation, emphasizing integrated educational experiences and systematic, cross-sector coordination that sets students up for “gainful employment and fulfilling lives.” This initial report examines two recent career-connected learning initiatives at Future Ready NYC and the Career Readiness and Modern Youth Apprenticeship programs and describes how the adoption and spread of these initiatives have changed the landscape of career-connected learning offerings at schools citywide. Researchers found that New York City public schools added formal career-connected learning offerings in nearly 100 schools between the 2021–2022 and 2024–2025 school years, while maintaining preexisting programming. Researchers also found that a smaller share of schools have been offering Career Readiness and Modern Youth Apprenticeship programming than those offering Future Ready NYC. However, researchers found that Future Ready NYC pathways are more structured: expectations for school staff and students are meticulously planned, and the milestones are more granular.

In 2021, California committed to providing preschool for all 4-year-olds and income-eligible 3-year-olds by 2025–26. The largest investment in public preschool was the expansion of transitional kindergarten, a preschool program run exclusively in public schools. At the same time, state policymakers committed to maintaining a mixed delivery system, a system in which preschool and child care are offered in a variety of settings. The mixed delivery system includes transitional kindergarten, the California State Preschool Program, Head Start, licensed family childcare homes, and licensed childcare centers. This report examines two districts and two cities that are taking a range of approaches to align preschool programs and increase access to high-quality early learning within California’s mixed delivery system. Researchers found that the four case study sites reveal both common themes and variations in local approaches to ensuring robust preschool systems. These include strong and consistent leadership focused on early childhood education, coupled with long-term strategic planning, are essential elements of local system coherence; collaborating with community partners and building centralized enrollment systems builds families’ awareness of programs; setting common quality standards for all preschool classes helps address disparities in program quality requirements; and local resources and government structures influence sites’ ability to improve ECE workforce preparation and compensation.

The federal Dole Act authorized significant expansions of health care programs for veterans and support for their caregivers. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) allows eligible veterans to receive health care from community providers through the Veterans Community Care Program. This statement summarizes recommendations and related work on the Community Care program and includes preliminary results from Government Accountability Office’s’s ongoing work examining VA’s efforts to provide mental health support to caregivers. Preliminary results show that the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) responded to challenges caregivers reported with accessing in-person support by implementing a virtual therapy program. The VHA also established goals to assess the effectiveness of its outreach efforts. These include a goal to increase program enrollment by 15% each fiscal year, which it met in Fiscal Year 2025. However, the VHA has not set quantitative targets and time frames for its other goals.. The GAO also reported that the Office of Integrated Veteran Care, which VHA created to improve coordination of community care, did not always clearly communicate information to its facilities.

Each year, millions of workers in the United States leave the labor force, at least temporarily, because of a medical condition or illness. Many of these workers fall through critical cracks in the social support system and exit the workforce permanently. The Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury Illness Network, a collaborative effort by the U.S. Department of Labor and the federal Social Security Administration, aims to implement and test programs that use early-intervention stay-at-work or return-to-work strategies with adult workers who have recently experienced the onset or worsening of an injury or illness that challenged their ability to work. This report presents findings from participation, impact, and benefit-cost analyses for each of the five Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury or Illness programs. Researchers found that after a one-year evaluation, the five programs successfully identified and enrolled workers experiencing new or worsening health conditions and connected them to stay-at-work or return-to-work supports. Programs’ service use data indicate that nearly all treatment enrollees developed a return-to-work plan, and most had repeated contact with a return-to-work coordinator during the six-month service window. Impacts on employment and earnings varied across states, with one program generating significant gains in employment and earnings in the first year for treatment enrollees relative to control enrollees. In addition, three programs had large, favorable impacts on enrollees’ self-reported health outcomes at the time of the one-year follow-up survey. Lastly, in all programs, the estimated costs of delivering services exceeded the estimated monetized benefits observed within the first year after enrollment, reflecting the up-front investment in services and the limited time frame for benefits to accrue during the one-year follow-up period.

Like many states around the nation, Oklahoma is facing an increasingly constrained housing market. Home prices for sale and rent have both increased substantially more rapidly than personal income over the past decade. Families with low incomes face particularly high barriers to finding affordable homes. This report presents findings from an assessment of the affordable housing subsidies and related economic development incentives in Oklahoma. Researchers found that Oklahoma is expanding investment in affordable housing, including through the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, state tax credits, the Oklahoma Housing Trust Fund, and the Oklahoma Housing Stability program. In addition, Oklahoma City and Tulsa have recently expanded measures to supplement funding for affordable units. Researchers also found that while investment has increased in recent years, federal support for deeply affordable units has declined on a per capita basis, federal support for deeply affordable units has declined on a per capita basis. In addition, several state programs disproportionately concentrate investment in rural areas where a minority of the state’s population lives. The state has also struggled to leverage the 4% Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, and, as a result, has lost out on about $500 million in bond cap in recent years. Lastly, a disproportionate share of the state’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit units is located in areas with lower resident incomes—reducing, or at least not increasing, options for people living in affordable units to dwell in high-opportunity neighborhoods.

Youth placed in congregate care settings (i.e., group homes) tend to have worse outcomes than those placed in foster homes. In October 2021, the federal Family First Prevention Services Act was amended to limit states' use of federal funds for congregate care for up to 14 days in 2018. Provisions in the act direct the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to evaluate the impact of limiting the use of Title IV-E foster care maintenance payments to support congregate care. The GAO found that 26 of 49 states have not decreased the use of congregate care for youth in foster care, despite provisions in federal law. All 49 states that responded to GAO’s survey of child welfare agencies reported challenges securing appropriate foster care placements for youth. Twenty-five state child welfare and 26 state juvenile justice agencies did not know if the percentage of these youth in juvenile justice placements had increased since the act’s amendment. Among states with the information, 10 of 20 states reported an increase in the percentage of dually involved youth in detention (i.e., in a facility where a youth is housed while they await the outcome of their delinquency case) since October 2021. Lastly, while the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services monitors states' compliance with the federal provisions enacted in 2021, some states were not sure when certain exemptions apply. For example, the 14-day limit doesn't apply to youth at risk of sex trafficking. However, guidance does not detail how to determine when the exemption is met.

This report identifies opportunities for health sector leaders to narrow the health gap between the 50 million Americans who live in rural areas and those who do not. Reflecting the consensus of 21 senior leaders in the public and private sectors, the report elaborates on five ideas: 1) Let rural communities lead; 2) Update payment systems for rural health care; 3)Build rural economic development around health and healthcare; 4) Invest in prevention and population health; and 5) Modernize rural infrastructure. The report depicts health disparities in rural areas, which include higher mortality rates, a greater prevalence of chronic conditions and disability, and more infectious diseases. Rural residents are also significantly more likely to report problems affording their medical bills and more likely to carry medical debt when compared to urban residents. Yet the report emphasizes that poorer rural health can be reversed and that the entire nation would benefit from healthier rural regions. A community-centered approach that offers better access to affordable care and champions policies that respond to the distinctive assets and challenges in rural areas can lead the way to better results.

Multiple AARP Research surveys have reported that older adults experience ageism in health care. One survey noted that nearly six in 10 older adults (58%) say age discrimination happens "some of the time," while another found that nearly one in four older adults say their (or a family member’s) medical concerns have been “minimized, ignored, or dismissed during care.” Given the rapidly growing population of adults 50 and older who will require increasing levels of health care in the years ahead, it is now more important than ever to remove ageism from the equation. Fortunately, initiatives are already taking hold, and tools in use are helping to change traditional approaches to health care, not only for older adults but for everyone. They all start with the recognition that a clinician and all health professionals must understand what matters to the patient, as described in the first blog in this series on shared decision-making.